Someone explained to me that new yorkers have feelings and can feel pain, and then the city sold the sewers to blacrock and they increased my rent, so at that point i wasn’t a cannibal or a humanoid underground dweller anymore.

So for me, it was literally growing up and becoming a College Lib

Then I joined the DSA and started to get upset with the other members about them being so milquetoast and incapable of doing anything to benefit anyone

When someone called me a Marxist as an insult (which I laughed off and said “I don’t even know what that is”) I started to get into Marx and realized he was basically right about a lot of things

Then I moved out of the Midwest and saw that even in a supposedly progressive, forward-thinking state on the East Coast, things are shitty

As for family, I just make fun of my relatives who are still Chuds

I don’t know if it does anything to make them change their minds, but it makes them shut up

I used to be a full blown “the status quo is fine, things are getting better all the time, technology will inevitably save us all when the Singularity™ happens” tech liberal.

Actually going to “futurology” conferences in my local area changed that. One too many DoD contractor booths and from-their-own-mouths terrifying statements from the ruling class and their minions made me realize the future they wanted was not Star Trek; it was something much closer to Silent Running, or even Rollerball.

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I became less of an edge lord teenager and learned to become an empathic adult

Re-writing this whole comment because I can do better.

There was a lot of things that got me to stop being a chud. HBomberguy dunking on Davis Aurini was a big one. But realy the biggest factor was the realization that basically all my friends could be categorized as ‘undesireables’ and everyone who held the kinds of beliefs I was being fed (i.e. the people it was ‘acceptible’ for me to hang out with) just rubbed me the wrong way.

That was mostly an internal journey, though, and not what you’d call replicable. A better option would be to show them that their boogeymen are not only stupid (e.g. ‘diversity quotas’ are basically unenforceable) but actively dangerous (e.g. abandoning the push for diversity would lead to an underclass of minorities ripe for even worse exploitation). Unless they genuinely have no sense of empathy, explaining how their perfect society requires thousands of people (including lots of people they might like) to be put to death

Not gonna say I was a nazi, just socially conservative. The secret ingredient was the catholic church asking me to decide between it and believing my gay friends won’t go to hell as well as a lot of self criticism for cultural osmosis racism

Pretty much the second I entered the working world and found out that my peers are in general pretty cool and nice I shed my edgelord pretty quick.

The edgelord was more of a coping mechanism to handle mentally stunted schoolkids/teachers in this shite education system. All the edgelord 4chan crap became pretty cringe to me once I started talking to normal people and forming any sense of self worth.

I managed to get my brother out of being a chud but adult chuds are impossible in my experience they’re usually lacking the prerequisite anything to process new thoughts. With my brother I just had to expose him to the right ideas and he did the rest of the work himself because unlike my parents he hadn’t shed every sense of empathy.

Dumbass take, feel free to disregard:

Shitposting. Maybe never stop being a chud, just start being chuddy toward the right groups?

I had a lot of anger at the world and could only see it through a myopic lens. Lib opinions felt light gaslighting, telling you that everything is good actually and that you should just shut up and learn to love the system. Seeing chapo shitposting felt so fucking validating. Seeing libs called out not just for being some reactionary slur but actually dressed down for their poorly formed opinions on very obviously unjust systems. Thanks to shitposting on libs I was able to be opened to the idea that it is not wrong to be angry at the hierarchies I see around me, but instead to realize what processes and structures actually control those hierarchies. Its capitalism.

Similarly, being mad about “woke culture”, “diversity quotas” may be able to be channeled into an idea that it is unjust for some group to have say on who gets to do what, and who even gets to define those groups? Its probably not even members of those supposed groups making up those quotas, but some who is using it to boost revenue. You can cite black thinkers who agree that fighting capitalism is best done with solidarity across working people.

In short, allow them to be angry, help lift the veil as to what is actually making them angry. Its capitalism.

I went to college and met people who were different from me, and then I started working and realized that corporations don’t care about workers. After that it was a lot of reading theory.

For me it was America’s response to 9-11. So you only have 2-3 days to really nail this one.

Realizing I can get shot for not being white and all of my fellow conservatives would cheer, not think about it, or spread rumors about me being a Hollywood Beijing crisis actor. And literally everyone on the right was obsessed with SJWs and “gamergate.” I admit, I found some of those SJW compilations funny. But then after a while I found it really pathetic that grown ass men who get upset at ‘unemployed people’ going around debating children and getting angry over video games

Also everyone kept complaining about communists ruining the world when they haven’t had influence for like 30 years. Also finding out old government policies and propaganda about how being against the KKK, racism, segregation, unfair wages, imperialism, and homophobia made you a loyal KGB agitator

Also, in high school I was a self proclaimed conservative libertarian capitalist anti communist. But during an activity, I was the only person who stood up when the teacher asked who would prefer if rich people should be forced to redistribute their wealth so poor people suffer less. She said “congratulations. You’re a socialist. The rest of you are capitalists” (she was a well intentioned socdem). Anyway, it made me think about what drew me into the so called “libertarianism” sphere and it was because I liked guns and didn’t hate anybody because of their race or gender or orientation or low income, but much of the libertarians aligned with the GOP

Roughly how old are they? I think a lot of it depends on how set in their beliefs they are.

In a nutshell I lost my employer provided healthcare and had to pay $2k a month for COBRA to insure my small family. Then I was able to get insurance on the exchanges that was absolute dog shit and still $1k a month, half my rent. It covered nothing.

Ofc that got me very interested in universal healthcare, and once you’ve made that mental leap it’s easy to see all the other failings of capitalism including institutional racism.

For me it was at one point being consistently exposed to people with left-wing views. I think it’s hard to maintain a right-wing worldview unless you have little to no exposure to anyone but chuds.

Also you stop being 15 at one point. That certainly helps